“Money attracts the female you want, struggle attracts the woman you need”: The pejoration of
female (n).
Melissa Robinson, University of North Texas
Recently, Deborah Cameron discussed the semantic differences between female and woman in her blog
Language: A Feminist Guide, pointing out the negativity associated with female. “Whereas ‘woman’ can
feature in positive as well as negative judgments, it’s hard to think of any context in which the noun
‘female’ is used to praise its referent: no one would say, for instance, ‘my late grandmother was an
absolutely marvellous female’” (2016). Though female can function as either a noun or an adjective,
when the referent is human, woman (n.) is the preferred form, as in 1:
1. The woman in the store was helpful.
compared to 2:
2. The female in the store was helpful.
Female, on the other hand, is typically used as an adjective, as in 3:
3. The female store clerk.
As Cameron notes, when female is used as a noun, the broader semantic context is pejorative.
The present study documents an increase in the pejorative use of female (n.), as in example 2, over the
past ten years with data from Twitter, political interviews and commentary, anti-feminist blogs, and
video blogs. A total of 614 spoken and written instances of the noun female have been extracted and
coded from these sources, 89% of which are pejorative. An analysis of the data suggests this use of
female is undergoing a semantic shift, and its meaning has become more equivalent to bitch than to
woman. In the majority of these cases, positive behavior such as ‘loyalty’ promotes the use of woman,
while female is restricted to negative behaviors such as ‘greed’ as seen in example 4:
4. “Money attracts the female you want, struggle attracts the woman you need.”
The data also reveals that the pejorative use of female has begun to replace bitch in common slang
phrases with the head noun bitch, such as basic bitch and thirsty bitch. Both of these pejorative slang
terms have a negative head noun, such as bitch, to carry the derogatory meaning. In example 5, female
replaces bitch, and miss independent bitch refers to a basic ass female. While it is grammatically possible
to use basic woman in this context, semantically it is not as pejorative as basic female and does not
imply the same negativity.
5.
“Unless you are one of these basic ass females in which case... im glad i dont pay taxs in the usa
that pay your welfare ‘miss independant bitch.’”
To bolster the argument that female (n.) is semantically pejorative, additional data suggesting that other
nouns are undergoing this same shift will be presented. Nouns such as illegals, poors, and gays, as
shown in examples 6 and 7, demonstrate that when the plural suffix is added, a pejorative shift takes
place:
6.
“also this taste kinda ‘if you receive your tax return and you dont need it, shred it or else a poor
will get it by accident’”
7.
“As a proud member of the middle class, I can't wait for all of the poors to die off.”
References
Cameron, D. (2016, April 3). To gender or not to gender? (Thoughts prompted by the death of
Zaha Hadid) [Web log post].